There’s…a lot going on. So much so that I’m wondering if writing these is worth the energy it expends. But I told a few of you I would, so here I am.

It’s the First Monday of October, the day the Supreme Court convenes for this session. Normally, I’d have a quick rundown of what the court might be hearing (and I’d make an attempt at a writ of certiorari joke) and we would touch on the importance of the judicial branch of our government.

But up is down and right is wrong and it feels like none of that matters. The Supreme Court is just too big for me to comprehend at the moment.

What’s that quote? “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I’m just trusting in that right now.

I was shocked to realize this morning that it’s been five years since I did a full slate of October Thoughts. Five years.

In that time, I’ve written about soccer and little else. What a ride it’s been: a World Cup Final, three NWSL Finals, an MLS Cup final, CCL, the US Open Cup, and more than a few ill-advised road trips.

But somewhere, a little over a year ago, I basically stopped writing. A few words here or there, but nothing more. Maybe a little depression, more than a little frustration, and a complete forgetfulness about why I starting writing in the first place left me with no words to say.

Things started creeping up on me a few weeks ago. October things. If you’re not an October Person, this might not make any sense to you. And that’s okay. Theoretically, I know there are February People out there somewhere. I don’t know any, but I’m sure they’re out there. Maybe they’re ashamed of all the pink and red and heart-shaped things. Whatever. Everybody has their thing, and it seems a significant number of people are predisposed to October things.

It started in the mid-’90s, when I was circling Lake Michigan in a blue Ford Econoline van with a handful of friends. We spent a lot of time in Wisconsin which, in my humble opinion, is quintessentially October at least three months out of the year. Stunning fall color, sharply-steepled churches on hilltops (seriously, Google image search “Wisconsin church” and you get every picture-perfect October church imaginable), and tons and tons of small town harvest fests and whatnot.

We started making a list of our October Thoughts for the Day, things we could wax poetic about during the month of October, things that make October…October.

If you’re an October Person, you likely have a list of these things tucked away, even if it isn’t written on paper. It’s a little file in the back of your mind filled with sights and scents and sounds that elicit a specific response.

A lot of my October Thoughts were formed in childhood and memories of that time are triggered by a thousand different things. I think it’s probably the same for most October People.

So, as we wander deeper into October, I’d invite you to look back to your childhood, back to a time before everything got so complicated, back to when a white sheet was nothing more sinister than a ghost costume.

Remember the magic. That’s your assignment for the entirety of October.

I was barely awake and, as is usual, I reached for my phone. It was already buzzing in my hand with a text from a friend excited to tell me about a podcast he’d just listened to. It had been about a state hospital in a town near where he’d grown up. The little girl had been in a state hospital, but not the one he needed to tell me about via text message at 6:30 in the morning.

I turned the lights on, stumbled into the bathroom, and turned the radio on in time to hear a story on OPB about the Oregon State Hospital in Salem. “You’re kidding with this, right?” I’m certain I said the words out loud.

Every family has a few stories that are rarely if ever told: scandals or embarassments swept under the rug or boxed up neatly and stored away on the shelf in the hall closet behind hatboxes no one ever opens.

I hesitate to put this little girl in that category, but she was definitely a story we did not tell.

Born into our family in 1946, she was a beautiful child with a terrible malady, a disability that meant she might not live through the night, might not live through the week, would certainly never live to adulthood. I don’t know that her mother ever saw her as it was believed to be kinder to whisk her off to a residential hospital to live out the remainder of her life.

I’m told my grandmother would visit her, this beautiful child, at the hospital where she lived. It was feared that if the little girl were brought home to live, and she died due to the complicated nature of her illness, her caregivers might be charged with a mercy killing. She lived just over two years.

So, after waking with her in my mind, and with the morning’s other nudges pressing on me, I started making inquiries: first to the editor of the local newspaper in the town where she’d been born, then to the state hospital system in California, and last to the cemetery where some of her closest relatives rest.

The newspaper editor was kind, pointing me to an online archive hosted through the county library. I pored over pages of old newsprint, neatly scanned into the website and fairly easily searchable with key words, but found no sign of the little girl.

The state hospital contacted me to direct me elsewhere, explaining that what I was looking for was not within the services they provided. I’m not entirely convinced this is correct, as even a basic study of hospitals (and asylums, and poor farms) from the early part of the 20th century shows many services overlapped in state-run facilities.

The cemetery director was more conclusive. “We have her,” the email said. The director agreed to take a walk out to her plot the next morning to see if a marker had been placed for her. There is no marker.

I woke up May 15 with her in my head. Three days later, I’d know the place of her interment (or, possibly, inurnment), the date of her death (July of 1948), and her birthday.

May 14, 1946.

***

I don’t know what I’ll do with the assortment of info I found while looking for her, or what I’ll do to fill the holes where so much is missing. I might just wait for the next voice.

I know it’s bordering on cliche to say something like that. Oh, this thing changed me. Changed my life. Changed how I view the world and its other inhabitants. Changed inherently the way I live my life.

But here I am, getting in cars with strangers, sometimes in cities with which I am unfamiliar, sometimes in countries of which I am not a citizen. I go places I never expected to go, with people I didn’t know just a short time ago, and I do things I didn’t think I could.

Because soccer changed me and it changed my world.

And I’m not alone.

So many of us have these stories. We came to this place, to be among these people, our soccer family, when something was missing from our lives. We found home, family, acceptance of our quirks, and a welcome like we’d not ever experienced before.

With this one shared interest, we gain an entire world.

We get in cars with strangers, we break bread with them, we travel across the country with them. And we are better for it.

I don’t remember what my life was before, but I remember my world being so much smaller. A weekend trip to Vancouver, or Houston, or Columbus, would have had me in a months-long planning frenzy. Now, those trips are spontaneous (or nearly so) and often result in incredible, though unanticipated experiences: a Meditteranean buffet in Texas, a latenight drive through the university district in Vancouver, a mad dash from Detroit to Columbus in December.

We find things we like. If we’re lucky, we find things we can feel passionate about. Sometimes, they’re things that cause us to set 3:45 a.m. wake-up alarms.

It’s difficult for people to understand the passion, especially those who do not share it. Even with those that do share it, it’s difficult to express the individual experience.

“Why Rangers?” He’s asked me this before and I give him the same answer every time. It’s the same answer I might give if asked,”Why Timbers?”

I fell in love.

In once case, it was a single player that ignited the spark. In the other, it was an entire city.

Rangers fell 5-1 this morning. That one player no longer plays for them, but I watched every minute of the match regardless. And the 5-1 loss didn’t feel as bad as I would have expected. Perhaps my senses were dulled by lack of sleep, perhaps it was just the relief of being back in the top tier after a four-year journey to get there.

In a few hours, I’ll be back in the North End at Providence Park to cheer on the Timbers. More passion, more love, more soccer. And tomorrow, I’ll be there again in support of the Thorns. But it won’t be without a tinge of sadness.

This morning, I made it official. I’m leaving the Prost Amerika family effective immediately.

It’s been a fantastic ride and I’ll be eternally grateful to Brennan Burns for offering up the opportunity three-plus years ago. My association with Prost has put me in places I never expected to be and allowed me to work alongside an incredibly talented group of writers and photographers here in Portland. I wish them nothing but the best. Their humor, their talent and, most importantly, their friendship have kept me sane through the ups and downs of the last few months.

In all likelihood, I’ll write more here. Or maybe over at SlideRulePass if they’ll have me (my password still works!).

At about the 18 minute mark, I decided I’d be perfectly happy with a scoreless draw.

A point is a point and, with Diego Chara having been bounced from the game in the 12th minute, that point was looking pretty good.

But it wasn’t enough.

The second red card of the match, this time to the opposing team, was drawn late in the first half and that scoreless draw I’d settled on suddenly didn’t seem like it was even an option.

Three goals in the second half came from three Timbers. None came from the visiting team.

Three goals, three points.

That was fine, that was great. But what came after is what was important.

You never know what you’ll get from Caleb Porter in the post-match presser. Today, we got philosophical, introspective Porter. Aside from Angry Porter, this is my favorite of the Porters.

Here’s the condensed version:

We stay locked on to the next game and that’s what we did today and that’s what we’re going to do for the next 10 games. We’re gonna play at our level. We’re not going to play at our current reality, where we sit in the table….We have to fight that natural inclination because we’re a lot better team than we’ve shown this year.

We’re going to play at our level. This is an acknowledgement and a declaration that this team is more than the standings show. We have expected more, but we’ve been disappointed. But Porter sat there in that room and said it out loud. This team has more in the tank than we can possibly imagine.

Let’s take a breath for a minute here. Get a beverage. Get a snack. Then read this next part.

Winning in sports is a lot about psychology. It’s about individual psychology, it’s about collective belief….We’re gonna go in the next game and…not think about what everybody else thinks about us because that doesn’t matter. What matters is what we think about ourselves.

Exhale deeply. This is our coach, our leader. This is the man entrusted with the reputation of the badge and the pride of the city. He’s loosening the reins. He’s getting ready to let this team take the bit in its teeth and run.